Video game hacker gets virtual execution

“You shall be taken from this game to a place of execution…”

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No one likes cheaters, especially in video games. So when a group of gamers in Guild Wars 2 had enough of one such ne'er-do-well, they took it on themselves to investigate and bring the rogue to justice which then led to his virtual execution.

The gamers recorded the cheater in action and posted videos on forums as well as complaining to the developers over what actions they would take against the hacker.

Up until then, a user by the name of DarkSide, had been accused of teleporting around the game world, inflicting enormous amounts of damage on other players and then evading harm. All in ways impossible to do in the game.

Despite other gamers teaming up with each other to kill off the hacker, this plan wasn't working out.

The video was brought to the attention of Chris Cleary, Game Security Lead at ArenaNet.

"We don't need to see it in-game,” he said. “Sometimes good video evidence is enough for me to track down who it was. In this case, the video was enough for me to find out who it was and take action."

"To accompany your video, I give you this video of his account's last moments,” he added.

The YouTube video posted sees the character now under control by AreaNet staff. The hacker's character is stripped down to his shorts. He then waved and jumped off a tower to his death.

The character was not allowed to respawn as staff logged out the character and deleted this character and others thought to be under the control of the hacker.